Reading this you might think this an odd challenge to set. You might get 8 hours sleep all the time and scoff at the thought of enjoying anything less. Well, I average 6.5 hours sleep per night. I have done for as long as I can remember. And that’s not a regular 6.5 hours sleep either, it’s more like 5 something hours during the week, and much more on the weekends to pay back my sleep debt.

My sleeping patterns are like this for two reasons. a) I’m a night owl with early morning commitments and b) I’m terrible at making time for sleep – there’s always something else to do, some task that I want to finish or chapter that I’ve got to read. No matter how tired I am, I possess a remarkable ability to put off sleep. That’s definitely not something to be proud of however and by all accounts, for the large majority of time, it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that I’m sleep deprived.

“Sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life.” Virginia Woolf

It worth clarifying that I generally don’t have difficulty sleeping in terms of actually falling asleep. Once I make the decision to sleep, I’m usually asleep in reasonable time. My lack of sleep is well and truly my own doing.

This is something I want to change and a commitment to 8 hours sleep per night should be enough to permanently modify my habit loop in order to regularly get more sleep.

Are you sleep deprived? Let me know in the comments below. Also, if you read this far, you should follow me on Twitter.

[…] Leading in to this challenge, over 122 sleeps, I had an average sleep time of 6:24 hours with an average sleep quality of 67%. Not bad you might think but that 6:24 hours was more like 5:00 hours during the week and much much more on the weekends. […]

[…] Leading in to this challenge, over 122 sleeps, I had an average sleep time of 6:24 hours with an average sleep quality of 67%. Not bad you might think but that 6:24 hours was more like 5:00 hours during the week and much much more on the weekends. […]